dj bean

Bruins haven't made things easy, but they can now

TORONTO – The Bruins haven’t dominated the Eastern Conference quarterfinals, yet they find themselves in a dominant position with a 3-1 series lead over the Leafs and the opportunity to close out the series at home on Friday.

If they do that, it would be a change of pace in a season in which the Bruins have rarely made things easy on themselves. When they held leads after two periods in the regular season, they’d ease up and lose a lot more often than they should have. When the Canadiens tried to gift them the Northeast Division down the stretch, they went 2-5-2 over their last nine.

But the playoffs, as they say, is a new season. It’s a time for underachieving players to rip up their old stat sheets and start anew, and a time for an underachieving team to change its reputation.

So Friday would be a perfect opportunity for the 2013 Boston Bruins to establish that they don’t ease up, and that when they get ahead -- in a game or a series -- they win.

“It's huge. It's really huge,” Milan Lucic said of the opportunity to wrap up the series in five. “We talked about it before [Game 4] about setting ourselves up and how big of a game this was for us. We wanted to go back home with a 3-1 lead and we were able to get ourselves back in it and step up and win this game.

“It's a huge opportunity for us to step up and close them out, but by no means is it going to be easy. We expect the best from them. They brought it hard the last three games and we expect them to bring it again on Friday night.”

Remember, for all the talk about how the Bruins had to win three Game 7s in order to win the Stanley Cup, they could have had to play in only one of them when you consider that they failed to close out both the Canadiens and Lightning when given the opportunity to do so in six games.

That’s not a knock on a team that won the Cup -- playoff hockey is the hardest thing to win at and a series win is a series win -- but the aim should be to close out a team as quickly as possible.

For a series that has been played so close at points, it’s kind of deceiving that Game 4 was the series’ first one-goal game. The Leafs felt after losing Game 3 that the games were closer than the scores indicated, and the Bruins feel the same way about their series lead.

“I mean, especially [Wednesday], this game could have gone either way but we just hung in there and got back from a two-goal deficit,” Rask said. “They've played really good all these games. Maybe the first game we kind of took over a bit, but after that they battled us really hard and created a lot of offense like that.”

The Bruins have changed a lot of things in a good way in the postseason. Milan Lucic, who had eight points over his final 14 games of the regular season (that’s more than a quarter of the lockout-shortened campaign), has matched that production with eight points (all assists) in the first four games of the playoffs. David Krejci, who had four points in a combined 14 games in the first rounds of the last two postseasons, has a cool 10 (5 goals, 5 assists) already this round.

The Bruins even scored two power-play goals on Wednesday, so in a series in which the Bruins turned past negatives into major positives, why not reverse their regular-season habits when it comes to closing things out?

Without bringing up bad memories with the F-word (the team that plays in Philadelphia), the last thing Rask and the Bruins want to do with this lead is let their opponent linger. They’ve seen what can come of it, and they should know after learning the hard way that with each win, an underdog gets hungrier and hungrier.

The Bruins know that that this series could easily be 2-2, so they don’t want to let up against a Leafs team that has shown it can hang with the B’s. Game 4 could have swung in the Leafs’ favor, but it didn’t, and it created an opportunity for the Bruins. They can win Friday, and then they can rest as they await their next opponent. Or they can let a surprisingly competitive Leafs team steal another road game and head back to the Air Canada Centre with a shot at forcing Game 7.

In a season that hasn’t been easy, they can change the course and make things easy. They’ll have the chance Friday.

Greg and Chris talk with Mike Reiss from ESPN Boston in hour 2 of NFL Sunday to discuss a variety of offseason happenings with the Pats and throughout the league. Greg and Chris also get into the NFL Draft and where Mariota and Winston will go.

Mike Reiss calls the guys to talk about the offseason news for the Pats. He talks about the Pats/Jets tampoering fiasco, free agency, where he sees Ridley and Connolly ending up, if the Patriots would be interested in Reggie Wayne and more.

In the first hour of the show, Greg and Chris discuss the news coming out of the owners' meetings this week and rule changes. Belichick's blow-up over the league not wanting to spend on endzone cameras was well documented and the guys react. They also talk about the Jets ridiculous tampering charges, free agents still lingering out there, where Stevan Ridley will land and the RB position in New England. Dickerson and Price briefly discuss the adventures of Tom Brady before being joined by WEEI.com's Mike Petraglia to talk all things Pats in the offseason.

Flannery joins Mut to break down the Isaiah Thomas trade to Boston and what it means for the Celtics this season and in the future. Paul also chats with Mut about the other deals that happened at the NBA's trading deadline

Mut, Tomase, and Bradford kick things off talking about Shane Victorino taking offense to people reading into some comments he made about trading for Cole Hamels. They also discuss Blake Swihart and how soon he could be up if Christian Vazquez starts the season on the DL.

Joe Kelly joined the Hot Stove show where he talked about being ready for his next spring training start after a biceps ailment forced him out of his last outing, he talks about his NCAA brackets and how teammate Wade Miley has a perfect bracket still.

Peter Chiarelli joined the Sunday Skate crew to talk about the Bruins playoff push heading into the final handful of games of the regular season. Chiarelli talked about avoiding some of the overly negative feedback he gets while realizing that the team does have real issues. He discusses what went down at the trade deadline and if he was happy with the outcome, Lucic having a down year and underperforming, the salary cap and if he considers it as big of an issue as it's been made out to be and what the future holds for the team.

It's a big hour #2 for the Sunday Skate dudes - they talk about the B's defenseman and what the future looks like at that position, with both moves the team can make and younger guys in the AHL. They also get into the Bruins philosophy on bringing guys up and sending them back down and how players deal with that. Finally, the boys are joined by Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli to discuss EVERYTHING.

The Sunday Skate crew gets the show going discussing the Bruins big, impressive victory over the NY Rangers yesterday. What can you take from that game? According to LB - Lyndon Byers - who called the guys from the road, not a lot. LB drops a dime on what was going on with the Rangers yesterday. DJ and Joe discuss Claude's lines and groupings and the importance of Ryan Spooner. They also get into Lucic, his contributions this year and if he can turn things around.

With the Wells report seemingly wrapping up (we hope), Tim and Lou got to talking about possible fines and punishments the Patriots must face. It's possible that the Patriots will face a small fine, but should they take that laying down? The conversation brings out a little passion from BOTH sides.